hinking.= What is the relation of memory to thinking and the
other mental functions? One often hears a teacher say that she does not
wish her pupils to depend on memory, but wishes them to reason things
out. Such a statement shows a misunderstanding of the facts; for
reasoning itself is only the recall of ideas in accordance with the laws
of association. Without memory, there would be no reasoning, for the
very material of thought is found to be the revived experiences which we
call ideas, memories.

One of the first requisites of good thinking is a reliable memory. One
must have facts to reason, and these facts must come to one in memory to
be available for thought. If one wishes to become a great thinker in a
certain field, he must gain experience in that field and organize that
experience in such a way as to remember it and to recall it when it is
wanted.

What one does deplore is memory for the mere words with no understanding
of the meaning. In geometry, for example, a student sometimes commits to
memory the words of a demonstration, with no understanding of the
meaning. Of course, that is worse than useless. One should remember the
meaning of the demonstration. If one has memorized the words only, he
cannot solve an original problem in geometry. But if he has understood
the meaning of the demonstration, then he recalls it, and is enabled to
solve the problem. If one does not remember the various facts about the
relationships in a triangle, he cannot solve a problem of the triangle
until he has worked out and discovered the necessary facts. Then memory
would make them available for the solution of the problem.

=Memory and School Standing.= That memory plays a large part in our life
is evident; and, of course, it is an important factor in all school
work. It matters not what we learn, if we do not remember it. The author
has made extensive experiments to determine the relation that memory has
to a child's progress in school.

The method used was to give logical memory tests to all the children in
a school and then rank the children in accordance with their abilities
to reproduce the story used in the test. Then they were ranked according
to their standing in their studies. A very high correlation was found.
On the whole, the pupils standing highest in the memory tests were found
to stand highest in their studies. It is true, of course, that they did
not stand highest merely because they had good memories, but be